Jolly Green Goddess
Today marks the first of our new twice-monthly Jolly Green Goddess column in the Sun, which we launch in response to popular interest in local gardening tips and activities. We will also give Jolly Green Goddess Green Leaf kudos at the end of each column for local business (wineries included) or residential gardens that enhance our environment with both beauty and environmental sensitivities.
Gardening isn’t just for people you don’t think you are, such as people with too much time on their hands, people who should “get a life,” and folks who do stop to smell the roses. Gardening is for you if you want to unwind a bit by noticing your surroundings, or if you want to make your environment prettier, more pleasant and more relaxing. And you can achieve a lot with very little expense.
You can be a vicarious gardener just by appreciating what others do to beautify your world. You don’t have to do it yourself. Great painters attribute their abilities to “seeing” what is before them.
Just like your enjoyment of good wine or food gets even better as you learn more about what you are consuming, you might enjoy the beauty of our valley if you see more of what is there naturally and how it gets so gorgeous.
And if you start to plant a little something in just a pot or wine barrel on your balcony or porch and care for it as if it were part of your life, you will enjoy life a little more. A $1.98 geranium can brighten your day and make you smile whenever you see it, or it can instantly cheer a friend in need of a few jollies. Nurturing even one plant can give life a new dimension.
Gardening is my therapy, as it is for many of us amateurs. And when I fail, that is, when a plant shrivels and dies, or bugs have their way with my virgin veggies, I feel badly, but I get over it. I just buy a new plant, or transplant a seedling. Easy.
Prices of cheese, vegetables, and basically everything we eat or use that is trucked into town, or whose ingredients are transported to where the product is made, will rise and rise and rise, as long as gasoline prices stay high. Even if oil prices go down, gasoline prices rarely go down proportionately.
So it makes lots of sense to increase your visual pleasures with a few flowers, and grow your own veggies in pots or orchards, depending on your situation.
If you have any fruit trees, you may be watching fruit drop like flies and worrying your head off. Sonoma Mission Gardens manager, Lydia Constantini, says that “June is natural thinning month.” (How I wish!)
Peaches and apples have been falling since May, and, as Constantini says, “the tree downloads so that it won’t be over-cropped.”
As much as it hurts to do so, pick a few of the fruits off your tree to thin the clusters. Get up your nerve and get aggressive, and you will enjoy bigger and better fruit in the end, because each piece will have room to grow and won’t have to compete with too many others to grab the yummy nutrients we enjoy.
If you are looking for edible flowers to plant now for color, try pansies, violets, nasturtiums (both flower and leaves are good), bachelor’s buttons and chive blossoms.
Sonoma Mission Gardens has a new bunch of sexy-looking hydrangeas called the Dutch Ladies Series, and it doesn’t matter if you are neither Dutch nor a lady. The flowers are lace-capped and run in pinks and reds. This nursery also has tomatoes and peppers on sale – buy one, get one free.
I bought some of the new Sluggo Plus, an “organic” blend that includes Spinosad and is supposedly safe to sprinkle around vegetables to discourage earwigs, slugs and snails. My extensive Google research shows that Spinosad comes from a naturally occurring soil-dwelling bacterium supposedly collected in 1982 from soil in an abandoned Caribbean rum distillery by a scientist on his or her vacation. Producers claim that it is as effective as chemicals but is a biological pest control organism that speeds up the bug’s nervous system after it dines on the little square pellets. Yum!
With our low rainfall and high fire danger, we might consider planting some fire-resistant plants here and there, particularly around houses.
Twenty or so years ago I gave Janet and Bob Nicholas some bright pink, flowering ice plant cuttings to plant around their hilltop home and turkey sheds on my belief that all the water in those chubby little leaves should slow down fire. What do you know, but “high moisture content” is one of the qualities now officially listed as a characteristic of “fire-resistive plants.”
Deciduous (lose their leaves) plants and trees are more fire-resistant, because their leaves hold more moisture for some reason. Wildflowers are good too, as long as you remove the dead stuff underneath.
Shasta and African daisies, asters, lavender, rock roses, black-eyed Susans, geraniums, candytuft, honeysuckle, periwinkles, thyme, poppies, verbena, clematis, irises, ivy, primroses, lamb’s ear, jasmine, hydrangeas, lilacs, oleanders, rhododendrons, yucca, ice plant, witch hazel and red-hot poker are all fire-resistant plants.
Remember, these friendly plants can only slow down a fire, because no plants are fire-retardants. Something to think about.
When bare-root trees are in again next winter, I’ll let you know which ones are fire-resistant and fruit-bearing so that you can plant for the future.
Garden news: Sonoma Garden Park needs volunteers with strong backs and willing hands to scrape wood chips off its trail on Saturday in preparation for a new ADA-compliant pathway. The Garden Park’s Harvest Market resumes on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the late Pauline Bond’s “ranch,” at 19990 Seventh St. E., Sonoma, between Denmark and MacArthur.
Jolly Green Goddess Green Leaf kudos go this week to Depot Hotel Cucina Rustica for the new staff garden along the bike path, loaded with cosmos, geraniums, corn, tomatoes and squash plants. If anyone dares to pick the flowers or pinch the veggies when they appear, the JGG will personally track the culprits.
Get down and dirty!
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